Upon installation of an OpenVZ container (VE/Virtual Environment) I was unable to set the date, and the time-zone was incorrect.  Attempts to set the date resulted in the following error.

# date 031612482009 date: cannot set date: Operation not permitted

To correct this problem, exit from the container (#exit) and issue the following commands.

# vzctl stop <veid> # vzctl set <veid> --save --capability sys_time:on # vzctl start <veid>

Where <veid> is your Virtual Environment ID.  Next, log back into your virtual environment and issue the following commands to set the appropriate time-zone for the Virtual Environment (VE).

 

# vzctl enter <veid> # mv /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.old # ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

 

Now you can set the date and time appropraitely.